Readings and Items of Interest

Below we highlight published items of interest to current/future postdocs and other PhD professionals. We are especially interested in drawing attention to policy issues, minority postdocs, and national/regional postdoc diversity affinity groups. For busy PhD professionals, we will scan the diversity literature and news outlets. We are also publishing original written works under the brand DiverseScholar so submit article ideas by contacting us at .

Today, there are 170 President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program scientists and scholars among UC faculty. Roughly 75 percent of all participants have gone on to tenure track positions at a college or university, with more than half joining a UC campus.

Ignoring small actions or comments is not effective. It does nothing to educate the members about the experiences of members who are not in the majority, it sends a strong signal that small acts based in unexamined bias are OK, and minority members may disengage from the group.

…the outcomes of the approximately 350 postdocs who have completed the IRACDA program:… 69% took jobs in academia, nearly three-quarters of which were at teaching- focused colleges and minority institutions. Twenty-one percent found work at government agencies, nonprofits, or other educational organizations, and 10% took jobs in industry. …IRACDA postdocs are finding academic jobs at a higher rate than their peers who do traditional postdocs.

A 2002 report for the University of California President’s Summit on Faculty Gender Equity found that while women were earning 45 percent of the Ph.D.’s in biology, women represented only 37 percent of postdoctoral appointments in biology (and 37 percent of the new-faculty appointments). That indicates a major leak in the pipeline between Ph.D. achievement and postdoctoral appointments.

Constructing an IDP is a four-step process with myIDP. The first step is to evaluate your own skills, values, and interests. The second step is to use this self-assessment as a guide for exploring and evaluating career opportunities in your field and, ultimately, identifying your preferred career, as well as an alternative option that you think you’d be happy with. Step three is to set some specific goals to prepare you for the career paths to which you aspire. After discussing these goals and outlining strategies with your primary mentor, it’s time to put the plan into place. You do this in step four.

The scientists evaluating [the] applications (which were identical in every way except the gender of the ‘submitter’) rated the male student more competent, more likely to be hired, deserving of a better salary, and worth spending more time mentoring. The gaps were significant.

Micella Phoenix DeWhyse: Why should the community care? It’s not only because trainees are suffering; it’s also because intellectual health is linked with psychological health. Most of us are at our most productive when we’re well adjusted—when we feel respected, valued, and confident in our potential. Unfortunately, that describes a rather small fraction of the science-trainee population.

The study examined minority graduate enrollments in four states — California, Florida, Texas (where the ban has since been lifted) and Washington State — that have had bans on the consideration of race in admissions decisions during the years since those bans were adopted. Across graduate programs, the enrollment of underrepresented minority groups has fallen 12 percent under the bans…

Couples in all fields, and particularly those in academe, face struggles over career priorities. For women scientists, the issue is especially acute since…83 percent of women scientists are partnered with other scientists, compared to 54 percent of men scientists.

Grutter recognized that having a diverse student body serves a variety of important educational objectives. One of those objectives can be described syllogistically: personal characteristics help determine our experiences; our experiences inform our thoughts and perspectives; therefore, having students with a wide array of personal qualities helps enrich the educational environment by infusing it with a rich variety of ideas and points of view.

…study examined the careers of a group of sociologists and found that women with children are more likely than childless women to end up in…a tenured job…they are as likely to end up on that career path as are men with or without children.

…students, more than other stakeholders, will be the main catalysts for change in the area of faculty diversity. ‘The students will make the difference. They are the ones who put the pressure on the institutions, and there needs to be more pressure from the students.’

“Positive Choices and Interventions Women Scientists and Engineers Can Make:

Seek affiliations with women in science and engineering, status of women committees, women’s studies, or the women’s caucus of your professional society to obtain support needed for your career.

Realize that having a spouse/partner supportive of your career is equally or more important than having a supportive mentor.

Look for evidence of women-friendly and family-friendly policies, lactation stations, women’s studies programs and other institutional policies and practices that may facilitate your career when interviewing and considering whether to accept a position in a particular laboratory or institution.”

There often is a commonality of experience made unique by our race and gender. Consequently, from one Black woman to another there can be a uniquely crafted kind of mentorship relative to the challenges of being black and female in a white and male dominated profession.

…a lot is already known about why students drop out of STEM studies. Among the leading reasons are uninspiring introductory courses, difficulty with the required math because of a lack of adequate preparation, and an academic culture that is sometimes not welcoming, particularly to women and minorities, who constitute 70 percent of college students but earn only 45 percent of STEM degrees.

Faculty of color wouldn’t be seen as rare and exotic species if college campuses were more diversified and more integrated. It would also help minimize the circus sideshow during faculty orientation. What I am opposed to, however, is all the talk and emphasis that administrators put on our diversity to the detriment and outright neglect of everything else we bring to the table.

…countless processes, norms, and cultures are daily stumbling blocks to women’s advancement. Female faculty are the handmaidens of academe, serving with their time, talent, and treasure in ways that move their institutions forward. But their contributions are often missed in considerations of tenure, promotion, recognition, salary increases, and leadership succession. Four decades after the passage of Title IX, it’s no wonder that women still suffer from chilly climates or vote with their feet and leave academe for greener pastures. The situation is especially perilous for women from minority backgrounds.

…the fact is, community colleges have been hiring more and more Ph.D.’s—mostly because they can, given the glut of Ph.D.’s on the market, but also because many two-year colleges these days aspire to become four-year institutions.

Today’s typical college leader is a married white male with a doctorate in education. He is 61 years old… racial and ethnic minorities, who represent 13 percent of college presidents, are slightly less prevalent than they were in 2006, when 14 percent of college leaders were members of minority groups.

We have been conducting an analysis to understand why NIH has failed to recruit, retain, and promote women and minority investigators…we have [publicized] tenure-track investigator recruitments at diversity-focused science Web sites such as www.MinorityPostdoc.org

…the study found that minority faculty members are less likely to land full professorships, less likely to win tenure, and less likely to work at research universities with very high research activity, or RUVHs, in relation to non-minority faculty.

…institutions have developed policies to create innovative postdoctoral programs specifically for cultivating the next generation of faculty members of color.” “Institutions should develop similar post-doctoral programs to encourage faculty members of color, especially Latino members, to develop as scholars, establish a research agenda, and eventually transition into tenure-track faculty positions.

…this is about more than diversifying undergraduate education. When we look at the relatively small change that has happened across the board, change has been very minuscule. When it comes to diversifying top positions, we have to be more intentional.

Women in STEM faculty positions at community colleges are happy, and it’s not because their jobs are somehow easier than those at four-year institutions…While many women in science at four-year institutions have lists of grievances, Anderson said that isn’t the case at community colleges.

Results from a world-wide survey comparing postdoc versus supervisor opinions on the twelve attributes to having a successful postdoc experience. An interesting observation is that female supervisors spend more time mentoring postdocs than male supervisors.

We need to reduce the impact of career breaks to encourage more women to pursue academic careers in science…we believe the key to increased representation of women in science lies firstly in ensuring that mechanisms are put in place for the career costs of parenthood to be more equally distributed between men and women.

The most distressing result of the shaky academic job market is surely the numbers of unemployed Ph.D.’s that it is creating and the consequent graying of the profession…as long as demand for diversity exceeds the number of faculty members who belong to racial and ethnic minority groups, those professors will retain mobility as well.

…some people are hostile to the concept of accommodations being made for academic couples. In [this article], arranged from A to Z, I have tried to reflect the agony, the ecstasy, and the anger surrounding the issue of dual-career couples in academe.

Shirley Malcom and Lindsey Malcom [mother & daughter, respectively] speak to the history and current status of women of color in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields…they connect the past and the present regarding the pathways used by minority women entering STEM, their patterns of advancement, and shifting paradigms on how best to support women of color in these fields.

As the world of science continues to diversify, providing information on how to be aware of your own biases and how those biases affect your interactions with others is vital. Importantly, knowing how to handle conflict when it does arise is a valuable asset for all postdocs.

With the pressures of research and productivity, white majority faculty do not have time to reflect on issues such as equity, affirmative action, racism, sexism, discrimination and diversity, nor do they feel they have a moral obligation to do so.

The Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science runs an online minority postdoc community that allows members to participate in peer-to-peer mentoring via discussion groups and opportunity listings…These resources offer scientists the opportunity to connect and share experiences where it would be difficult to meet in real life.

Access of minority women to the more prestigious postdoctoral positions and appointments in distinguished institutions has been and remains limited…The conferees felt that an awareness of the necessity of postdoctoral experience for advancement and mobility in certain fields, biomedical sciences especially, is an example of the kind of information minority women students often do not get.